Oh, By the Way

Biltmore Koi 01, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

I'm back from the South with over a thousand pictures to try and wade through... sometime, and edit and upload, and and and... but in the meantime things are certainly interesting out there in the political world. I've been back since Monday evening, and the presidential campaigns have made a point of giving me lots to blog about.

Hence, it wasn't until just now that I realized I hadn't done any of the photoblogging I was hoping to do post vacation adventures. Hence, meet Mr. Biltmore Koi! He's one of a handful of super huge goldfish I photographed while we were taking a tour of the Vanderbilt estate at Biltmore in Asheville, NC. This guy was remarkably beautiful and in an effort to capture his beauty and girth I took tons of photos. This is one of my favorites, and the only one I've edited for uploading so far.

I've got some fun pictures of smores, adventures in downtown Asheville and other stuff taken early in the trip up on Flickr and over the next week or so I'll try and get more pictures up!

Until then, here's Mr. Koi, and I'll be cranking away with more political yammering, talk of music, etc. soon!

Headline Appreciation

Jake Tapper over at ABC News gets a nod from me today for his headline, "People Who Live in Seven Glass Houses..." and the attached rundown of the current McCain how-many-homes-do-I-owngate.

McCain's campaign again rolled out the arugula today while responding to Obama's campaign releasing an ad on the subject. Oh, what fun.

This should really become an interesting little plot line, methinks. It's just so... rich, no pun intended.

Timetables, huh? Interesting idea... sounds familiar.

Just a little piece today in the AP about how Condoleezza Rice and the Iraqis met and talked through an agreement that's nearly complete. This agreement would lay out something people are describing as "timetables" for US withdrawal from Iraq.

Funny, I seem to remember one of the presidential candidates advocating for such timetables... and perhaps even a whole party doing so (sorry this article is like 2 years old... wait... that's not even old enough to capture just how long the Dems have been pushing for timetables). I also seem to remember another party, oh, I dunno, attacking such ideas as defeatist politicking.

Anyway, just a little news piece. Just some back-peddling. Perhaps a dash of hypocrisy? That's all. Nothing big.


UPDATE: Fox News calls them "Time Horizons!"

Toby Keith... Democrat? Interesting.

I've never paid tons of attention to Toby Keith, honestly he's only really ever come on my radar when writing songs about sticking boots up peoples' asses 'cause that's the, "American way," or more recently when I saw writeups claiming a new song is pro-lynching [yikes]. But today I stumbled across a short piece on HuffPo about how Mr. Keith lavished some nice praise on Barack Obama while also identifying himself as a Democrat.

Among other things he said, "So as far as leadership and patriotism goes, I think it's really important that those things have to take place. And I think he's the best Democratic candidate we've had since Bill Clinton. And that's coming from a Democrat."

Wow. Anyway, um... yeah, there you go.